


Snow

by earlgreytea68



Series: Nature & Nurture [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-16 23:07:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2287859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It snows. There's sledging.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Природа и воспитание: Снег (Snow)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10656324) by [PulpFiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PulpFiction/pseuds/PulpFiction)



> Thank you to arctacuda and flawedamythyst for looking this over for me, and thank you to all the London fangirls who organized the Regent's Park outing, which clearly inspired me. :-)
> 
> I actually had a tough time with this fic. I find "toddler" a rough age to approximate in a really clever little boy, so...yeah.
> 
> Now translated into Russian: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10656324

It snowed. 

More than Oliver had ever seen in his very short lifetime. By an order of magnitude. 

John watched Oliver sit glued to the window, staring raptly while the snow painted his well-known world white, covered it in the otherworldly hush that only snow can bring. The traffic noises died down, and London settled itself in for an overnight snowstorm. 

“It’s snow,” Sherlock explained, sitting by the window with him. 

“Real snow?” asked Oliver, his voice barely a whisper, as if speaking any louder might cause the magic snow to vanish in front of him. 

“Real snow. Frozen water.”

Oliver pressed his nose up against the window, the better to see the snow, and then turned to look curiously at Sherlock. “Ice?” 

“Not quite,” Sherlock agreed. 

Oliver gave Sherlock a look that said he wasn’t sure he trusted what he was saying, and then turned back to the window. 

“You’ll never get him to go to bed,” John remarked, settling with his tea and watching Oliver fondly. 

Sherlock shrugged and picked up his violin. 

Oliver turned his head and looked at John and said, “Papa, _snow_ ,” and gestured pointedly at the window. 

“I see it, love.” 

“No, come _see_ ,” Oliver insisted. 

So John stood and went to the window and set next to it and let Oliver settle against him. Oliver seemed content to just watch the snow fall, and Sherlock played his violin behind them. The flat was cozy and content, and John snuggled Oliver close, burying his nose in his hair and closing his eyes. Oliver didn’t squirm. Oliver never squirmed when cuddled this way. Oliver cuddled back, held on just as tightly, and most of the time John didn’t let himself think of how damaged Oliver might be because it did him no good to worry. But sometimes one of them—and it was just as likely to be Sherlock—needed the comfort of knowing that the others were there, and they had an unspoken agreement to let that happen, to cling to each other when they needed to, a silent acknowledgment of _you’re here and so am I_. 

“I love snow,” Oliver announced with a happy little sigh, and John smiled against him. “Always snow?”

“We can’t have snow all the time. It only happens on very rare occasions when it is cold enough.”

John saw the frown that flickered over Oliver’s face, reflected back at him in the glass of the window. “Always snow,” Oliver said stubbornly. 

John chuckled and pressed his lips against Oliver’s head again. “Don’t worry, I’m sure your dad will come up with a way to make it always snow for you.” 

“Always snow,” Oliver agreed, pleased. “I love snow. Daddy loves snow. Papa loves snow. Ma Hudders loves snow. Molly loves snow. Greg loves snow. Myc loves snow. George Orwell loves snow.” 

“Everyone loves snow,” John confirmed. Oliver did this sometimes, ran through the entire roster of people he knew and cared about, as if reassuring himself that they all existed. “Tomorrow we’ll go out and play in the snow; would you like that?” 

Oliver inhaled sharply, as if he had never thought such a wonderful thing could ever occur. “Yes!” he exclaimed, and then abruptly tugged himself out of John’s lap, running over to where Sherlock was standing by the fire as he played. “Daddy play in snow!” he commanded. 

“Tomorrow,” Sherlock said. 

“With violin!” continued Oliver. 

“The violin doesn’t go out in the snow.” 

Oliver gasped, offended at the idea of being denied something, and John headed off the tantrum he saw coming by saying, “Here. Let’s read.” 

Oliver gave Sherlock a look that said he wasn’t going to forget the issue of the violin in the snow and toddled over to where John settled in his chair with the mystery novel he was reading. 

“Boring book,” said Oliver contentedly. He always said that about John’s books because he heard Sherlock say it too much. 

“I know, I’m awful,” John said, and opened the book to where they’d left off and started reading aloud. Oliver listened closely and interjected little exclamations when interesting things happened in the narrative, and said, “Daddy?” questioningly whenever there was a crime scene description so that Sherlock could monologue on what they’d got wrong. Not everyone, John thought, would have read their two-year-old a slightly gory murder mystery, but not everyone was raising Oliver Watson-Holmes. 

Eventually John realized he was yawning more and more as he read, and finally he said, “I’ve got to go to bed, Ollie.” 

“Boring,” said Oliver, taking the book out of John’s hands and settling in as if he was going to finish it himself. 

“I know.” John kissed Oliver’s head and set him down on the chair he was vacating. “You should try to get some sleep at some point so that you can enjoy the snow tomorrow.” 

“Boring,” Oliver informed him with a baleful look that said _how many times must we have this conversation_. 

John didn’t even bother to respond to that. He turned to where Sherlock was now curled up with his laptop and kissed him. “Night, love.” 

Sherlock grunted, which John took to mean, _Good night, love you, too_. He was very adept at interpreting Sherlockspeak. 

John got ready for bed and curled up under the duvet. In the other room he could hear Sherlock’s voice, the low murmur of it monologuing something to Oliver, and John drifted off to sleep listening to it. 

***

John woke to a dazzlingly bright room and Sherlock snoring in his ear, and he smiled and stretched and leaned up to turn the clock so he could see it. It was early still, although not outrageously so, and any minute now, he was sure, Oliver would wake and demand to be taken outside to see the snow. John turned to face Sherlock and kissed the tip of his nose, which twitched in reaction, but otherwise Sherlock didn’t stir and kept snoring. The snoring was a newer occurrence, and while it was neither steady nor regular, it showed up often enough that John had stopped teasing him about it because he knew he would be mortified. 

So instead John pulled the duvet up over their heads and rolled in the ensuing dark coziness so that he was sprawled completely on top of Sherlock, and then he commenced to kissing him awake. 

“Good morning,” murmured John when Sherlock’s responses were coordinated enough that John knew he was awake, and then kissed him again. 

“Why’s the duvet over our heads?” mumbled Sherlock around John’s mouth. 

“Snowy day,” John told him. 

“That’s—mmph—not an answer.” 

“Yes, it is. Snowy days are for blankets—and kisses—long—lazy—snogs—by the fire.”

“We’re not by the fire.” 

“Shut up,” said John. 

“Keep my mouth busy,” countered Sherlock. 

So John did, and Sherlock clenched his hands into John’s hair and tugged slightly. John smiled a bit and kissed harder and deeper and filthier, a slow seduction, drawing it out, until they were both panting in the close confines of the duvet and the kiss was sloppy with distracted need and they were taking turns teasing each other with quick, shallow thrusts. 

“Snowy days are an excuse for morning sex, are they?” managed Sherlock, into the space caused by John wriggling them out of their pajamas. 

“Do I need an excuse for morning sex?” asked John. 

“No,” said Sherlock, and then John shut him up again, until he was no longer shutting him up and Sherlock was biting out a long trail of _yes_ and _please_ and _more_ and _that_ and _there_ and _John_ , which was exactly the sort of talking John liked to encourage during sex. 

Too soon, though, Sherlock was back to coherent talking. “Can we get out from under this duvet now?” he asked around heaving breaths. “I can’t breathe.”

“You can’t breathe because of the sex, not because of the duvet,” said John, but the air was blessedly fresh and cool once they had scrambled themselves out of the duvet. “How long do you think we have before Ollie wakes up?” John asked lazily, turning his head on his pillow to brush a kiss over Sherlock’s earlobe. “Long enough for a shower?”

“You can take a shower,” Sherlock replied, “I’ll handle him.”

“But I meant for us to take a shower _together_.” 

Sherlock glanced at him. “Snow makes you _ravenous_.” 

John laughed and rolled to tuck himself against Sherlock’s side. “I’m in a good mood,” he said after a moment. “Not just from the sex, just…” John’s hand crept up and tangled itself into Sherlock’s thick, dark curls, fully grown back and just as they had been before, which had been an enormous relief to John, who had secretly worried they might grow in differently. 

Sherlock understood. He lifted John’s other hand to his lips and kissed his palm, and then he said, “We’re okay,” which was almost a catchphrase with them, they had fallen into the habit of saying it so often. 

“I know,” John said, because he did, but he still turned into Sherlock’s neck. 

“Papa!” shouted Oliver from upstairs. “Daddy!” It was his typical morning greeting. John was quite sure Oliver could determine by now how to get out of his cot and also how to get down the stairs. John was saved from that by the fact that Oliver was also incredibly lazy and preferred to order them around whenever possible. 

“We’re being summoned,” Sherlock remarked. 

“He’s so charming.” John lifted his head. “He gets that from you.” John kissed him briefly. 

Sherlock reached out to grab him and pull him back in for another brief kiss. “Yes, he does,” he agreed. 

“You don’t have to sound _proud_ of that,” John informed him, amused, and then slid out of the bed. 

“I’ll get him,” Sherlock said, stretching, as Oliver shouted down, “Papa, it’s _morning_ ,” as if alarmed that they might not have realized this. “You wanted to take a shower,” Sherlock continued. 

“I’m fine.” John shrugged into one of Sherlock’s dressing gowns, which was hopelessly enormous on him. John liked how comfortable and worn in they were, and how they smelled like Sherlock, and how Sherlock liked to see him wearing them even though he never said anything. “Try to dress in something practical today. I don’t want to hear you complaining about how the snow has ruined your seven-hundred-pound shoes.” John disappeared into the bathroom before Sherlock could squawk indignantly at being accused of complaining about such things, grabbed a damp flannel, and cleaned off a bit on his way up to fetch Oliver. 

Which meant he was presentable by the time he entered Oliver’s nursery. He tossed the flannel over into Oliver’s hamper and walked over to Oliver, who said, “Papa, it’s morning with _snow_.” 

Trust Oliver not to forget. “I know,” John said, lifting him out of the cot. “Do you want to see?” He carried him over to the window, hoping it would be dramatic. 

It was. The snow was almost entirely undisturbed, so it was a lovely white blanket over everything, and the sun bounced off it dazzlingly. Oliver stared. 

“Very white,” he assessed finally. 

“Yes,” John agreed. “Let’s get you bundled and out in it.” 

John got Oliver dressed quickly. Oliver was eager to get outside, so he was extremely cooperative for once. John thought that, on cooperative days like this one, he really should try harder to get Oliver toilet-trained, an experiment Sherlock had tried around Christmastime with disastrous results that had ended in tears and throwing things and shouting and furious sulks. But that had been nearly two months ago, and John thought it was possible that a more reasoned approach might work if they could catch Oliver in an indulgent mood instead of a contrary one. John had told Sherlock that, and Sherlock had got offended over the idea that he was ever contrary, and so John was keeping all future toilet-training strategies to himself. 

When he went downstairs the shower was running, so he let Oliver into his domain of the sitting room and went to the kitchen to make tea and toast. 

“Papa, laptop, please?” asked Oliver very politely from the sitting room doorway, so John went and retrieved it for him and carried it into the kitchen, because it was still too heavy and big for Oliver to carry on his own. 

Oliver knelt on the chair in front of the laptop and started a new blog post because Oliver was smart enough to know how to navigate to his blog by now. Oliver was smart enough that he knew all of his letters and even how to spell the most important words in his life, which were _Daddy_ and _Papa_ and _Oliver_ and _George_ (for Mycroft and Greg’s dog) and _dead_ and _crime_. John thought Oliver was astonishingly clever, but Sherlock merely shrugged and said he’d been able to read by the age of three just from reading along with Mycroft when Mycroft read out loud to him, so clearly Sherlock had just expected that Oliver would pick up the concept of written language equally quickly. 

John set Oliver’s milk down next to him, and Oliver took an enormous swallow of it and then said, “Papa, snow?”

They did this often enough that John knew immediately what he was asking. “Sssssss,” said John, hissing like a snake, and Oliver surveyed his keyboard and then hit the _s_ key. “Snnnnnnnn,” said John, and Oliver hit _n_. “Ohhhhhhh,” finished John, and Oliver hit the _o_ key. “And then a _w_ to end things with,” John told Oliver. 

Oliver looked at him suspiciously. Oliver never trusted that John knew how to spell. He always asked Sherlock to verify. 

“I swear to you, I am telling the truth,” John said, and gave him some toast smothered in jam. 

Oliver looked without interest at the toast and hit the _w_ key. Then he carefully hit _enter_ twice and covered the rest of the blog post with a precise amount of artful keysmashing. He regarded it, looked pleased that it apparently accurately conveyed his feelings on snow, and then clicked _post_. Then he sat back in his chair and finished up his milk and had a stand-off with the toast. 

Sherlock wandered into the kitchen and said, “Good morning, Oliver. Are you ready for the snow?”

“Daddy, snow,” Oliver said, and pointed to his blog entry. 

“Eloquent,” said Sherlock, reading it over Oliver’s head, his hand absently in Oliver’s hair. 

“Right?” Oliver pointed at the word _snow_ on the screen and looked up at Sherlock queryingly. 

“Yes. S-N-O-W. Papa got that one right.” 

John rolled his eyes. “I get all of them right.”

“Someday soon his vocabulary will surpass yours. I am merely preparing him for that day.” 

“Yes, you’re right, he does get his charm from you. I see that now. And oh my God, what are you wearing?” John had been making tea when Sherlock had walked in and was just getting his first look at him. 

Sherlock was wearing jeans, which was fine because Sherlock did own jeans, he just didn’t wear them very often. And he was wearing one of John’s jumpers. Which was far too small for him. He had surely stretched it beyond all repair, and he looked utterly ridiculous in it. 

“Snow clothes,” Sherlock said negligently, and looked avidly at the cups of tea John was holding. 

“That’s my jumper.”

Sherlock gave him a look. “It isn’t as if _I_ have hideous, snow-ready jumpers lying about, is it?”

“Papa, tea,” Oliver commanded, gesturing with a hand he’d covered in jam from his toast while John had been staring in horror at Sherlock. 

John put one cup in front of Oliver and one cup in front of Sherlock and said, “But I _liked_ that jumper. If you keep tugging it down like that all day, you’re going to stretch it out and ruin it.” 

"John, you like all your jumpers, and they’re all hideous. I could have selected any of them, and I would have been justified in ruining it, and you would have been crestfallen at its loss. I’ll buy you a new jumper.” 

John narrowed his eyes, put toast in front of Sherlock, and said, his voice low and even and furious, “You are going to eat every single bite, and if you utter one single complaint I am going to run one of your ridiculous shirts through a paper shredder.”

Sherlock closed the mouth he’d opened to protest and immediately started eating his toast. 

Oliver was gaping at John. “You should eat your toast, too,” John informed him in a much pleasanter tone of voice than he’d used with Sherlock. 

Oliver clearly wasn’t taking the chance that John’s tone of voice would approach what he’d used with Sherlock and hurriedly started shoving toast in his mouth. 

“I…” Sherlock began, and then faltered, because Sherlock was generally terrible at offering apologies even when he was clearly apologetic. 

“I don’t mind that you mock the jumpers. I don’t even hear it anymore. But I don’t want you to actively _ruin_ them. Can we make that deal?” asked John calmly. 

Sherlock nodded immediately. 

“Good,” said John, and glanced at where Oliver had finished his toast and was now basically covered in jam. “Come here, you,” John said, and scooped him up and took him into the bathroom, where Oliver managed to make another enormous mess purportedly getting himself washed up. 

When they were finally finished, Sherlock was waiting in the hallway with coats and Oliver’s skull. He handed John his coat and swooped down to bundle Oliver into his. 

“Thanks,” John said, shrugging his coat on. 

Sherlock stood with Oliver in his arms. “Sorry about the jumper,” he said, looking sincerely contrite. “I didn’t mean to ruin your snowy day.” 

“You didn’t,” John assured him, and kissed him for good measure. Then he said, “Ollie, you need a hat.”

“I hate hats,” Oliver reminded him. 

“I know, but you can’t go out in the snow without a hat.” John managed to fish Oliver’s hat from off the antler where it had somehow got thrown at some point and turned back to him with it. 

Oliver frowned. “I have to for snow?”

“Yes. It’s the rule.” John settled it over Oliver, flattening his curls down. 

“I hate rules.”

“I know. You take after your dad.” 

“Rules are sodding stupid,” Oliver glowered. 

But Oliver’s foul mood over the hat was forgotten as soon as they stepped outside. “ _Snow_!” he exclaimed, and scrambled down out of Sherlock’s arms. Sherlock let him, because the street was generally deserted, and Oliver immediately sat directly in the snow, then wrinkled his nose. “Wet,” he said. 

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed. “I told you: It’s frozen water.”

Oliver reached out a mittened hand experimentally and scooped up some snow and studied it with Sherlockian thoroughness, even sniffing at it, before finally reaching out his tongue and tentatively touching it. 

Then he looked up at Sherlock, squinting in the bright sun. “ _Water_ ,” he said accusingly, as if he’d expected something much more exciting and blamed Sherlock for this. 

“As I’ve been telling you,” Sherlock said on a sigh. 

“Let’s go to the park,” John suggested, lifting Oliver up. “It’s silly to get distracted here on the pavement.” 

“No ducks,” Oliver warned him. 

“No ducks,” John promised as they walked. 

The park was crowded with other Londoners out enjoying the snowfall. Oliver seemed unable to make up his mind where to look. There was too much to see, too much to take in. 

“Shall we make a snow angel, Oliver?” John asked him. 

Oliver tipped his head, clearly not understanding but reluctant to admit that. 

John handed him to Sherlock and then got down on the ground and made a snow angel. It had been decades since John had made a snow angel. He’d forgotten that, actually, it was pretty bloody unpleasant to lay down in snow. 

When he stood up, Sherlock lifted an eyebrow at him and said knowingly, “Was that fun?” 

“Shut up,” John told him good-naturedly. 

Meanwhile, Oliver had squirmed to get out of Sherlock’s arms and down to the ground. 

“See?” John said to him. “It’s an—” Oliver enthusiastically stomped and kicked all over John’s angel. “Never mind,” John told him. 

Oliver ran a bit, then marched a bit, then got down and rolled a bit, giggling with delight the entire time. John and Sherlock trailed behind him, keeping a close eye on him, content to just watch him. Then, impulsively, John scooped up some snow, formed it into a ball, and threw it at the back of Sherlock’s head. 

He hadn’t been standing far away, so it connected solidly. Sherlock uttered an adorable squawking noise that attracted Oliver’s attention, and then Sherlock tucked Oliver’s skull up underneath his arm and leaned down to grab snow to retaliate. 

John, laughing, grabbed Oliver, who was looking at them in bewilderment, and ran, just as Sherlock managed a very good shot that deflected off the side of John’s back. 

Oliver made an exclamation and looked over John’s shoulder. “Daddy!” he said disapprovingly. 

“Papa started it,” Sherlock said, and John felt another snowball hit him more solidly in the back. 

Oliver made an affronted noise suspiciously like the squawk Sherlock had made, and John ducked down to grab snow and toss it backwards at Sherlock. 

“You’re _ridiculous_ ,” Sherlock said, and grabbed at the edge of John’s coat, pulling him backwards. “That wasn’t even a _ball_.” 

“The thing about you and rules is you only care about them when _other_ people are breaking them,” remarked John. 

“Obviously,” said Sherlock, and then kissed him, which was nice because Sherlock’s mouth was warm and his nose was cold and there was something bright and clear about being kissed in fresh snow in Regent’s Park with your child snug in your arms. 

The child disagreed. “Stop, stop, stop,” he commanded. “Not with me.” Oliver did not complain every time they kissed, but he did complain if he was stuck in the middle of it. He squirmed about and John put him down and they resumed walking, more leisurely now. 

John reached out and took Sherlock’s hand. “We could make a snowman.”

“Snow _man_?” said Oliver, glancing behind him and looking John up and down dubiously, as if to say: _Men are not made of snow; oh, Papa, what are we going to do with you?_

“The two of you practice that _oh-you-sweet-lovable-idiot_ look when I’m asleep, don’t you?” remarked John. 

“That’s not a look, that’s just our faces,” Sherlock replied. 

“Prat,” said John. 

Oliver had drawn to a halt in front of them and was staring up ahead, where a group of older children were sledging down the hill where the café sat. 

“What’s that?” he asked in wonder. 

“They’re sledging,” John said. 

“Me, too,” Oliver decided. 

“We don’t have a sledge,” John pointed out. 

Oliver stared at him, open-mouthed, and then started crying. 

“Ollie,” said John helplessly. 

“I want to _sledge_ , Papa,” said Oliver heartbrokenly. 

“You barely know what it _is_ ,” Sherlock informed him, with his usual practicality, but picked him up and cuddled him and looked at John. “We’ll find him one. Surely Mrs. Hudson has a tray or something that we can use as a sledge.” 

“I’m not sending him down a hill on a tea tray, Sherlock,” said John. 

Sherlock considered. “You think that’s too dangerous?”

John sighed and looked at the hill, where other children appeared to be doing exactly that. “I don’t know,” he admitted, because he never did anymore. He never knew when he was being paranoid or when he was being sensible. Because the one time he had convinced himself he was being paranoid had been the one time when Oliver had been stolen from them, and John was never going to forgive himself for ignoring that. But he also recognized, at the same time, that he couldn’t live his life listening to that screaming panicked voice in his head. 

“Let’s get closer and investigate the issue,” Sherlock decided. 

_Investigate_ was a word Oliver understood and liked. He stopped crying and perked up. 

They wandered over closer to the hill, where children were enthusiastically sledging down on anything that could remotely hold them, and a lot of things that couldn’t hold them at all. Oliver clung a bit to Sherlock as he watched them, open-mouthed, and John tried to watch him closely without making him aware that he was watching him closely. Because Oliver had very little experience with other children. John brought this up every so often, and Sherlock always shrugged and waved away John’s socialization concerns. John didn’t press it because John had his own impulse to keep Oliver as insulated as possible from the rest of the world. But John dreaded that impulse inside of him, and watching Oliver’s shyness made him realize exactly what harm he was doing. Sherlock had grown up feeling isolated and lonely, on the outside looking in, and John had been determined not to make that mistake with Oliver. 

“Do you want to go and play with the children?” John asked firmly. 

Both Sherlock and Oliver looked at him with identical expressions of alarm. 

"The _other_ children?” said Sherlock, as if to clarify John’s current idiocy. 

John almost rolled his eyes, but instead he just pulled Oliver out of Sherlock’s arms. Sherlock let him go—which was an indication that some part of Sherlock thought John was right—but Sherlock still trailed behind him as he walked firmly closer to the children on the hill. 

“John, I don’t think—”

“Hush,” John told him, and found himself a group of children that included kids young enough to be Oliver’s peers. This meant, naturally, that they also had parents with them, all of whom gave him friendly smiles. 

Oliver stared at all of the children with what looked like faint horror, as if to say, _Papa, why would you willingly bring me over to all of these creatures?_

“Hello,” John said jovially. “Are we enjoying the snow?” 

Every child of course gave him enthusiastic exclamations about the snow, and the parents all gave John knowing smiles and said things about how they were never going to get the children inside and how they ought to spike the hot cocoa. John could feel Sherlock behind him radiating disapproval and kept stepping to try and block people seeing Sherlock glowering behind him. 

“And what’s your name?” one mother asked Oliver directly. 

Oliver uttered a noise of Holmesian indignation at being _addressed directly_ over such a _tedious question_. 

“This is Oliver,” John said. 

“Are you enjoying the snow, Oliver?” the mother went on, undeterred. 

Oliver frowned. “Wet and cold,” he told her. 

The mother laughed merrily. “Isn’t he a serious one?” she said to John. 

“Yes,” John agreed. “One word for it.”

“Would you like a go on the sledge, Oliver?” asked another mother, as it skimmed to a gentle halt next to her, dislodging a small cargo of children.

Oliver looked longingly at the sledge, clearly torn between self-disgust at wanting something so pedestrian and simple desire to sledge down the hill. 

“Oliver would love a go on the sledge, wouldn’t you, Ollie?” said John on Oliver’s behalf. 

Oliver gave him a put-upon, long-suffering _if you insist_ sigh that John was an expert at ignoring. 

“Come on, up the hill,” said the mother in charge of the sledge cheerfully. 

John said to Sherlock, “Wait here to catch him at the bottom.” 

Sherlock just nodded, looking too stricken by too many different concerns to even articulate any of them. It was a bad state of affairs when John had struck Sherlock speechless. 

John carried Oliver up the hill, and Oliver closed his little fist into John’s coat, clinging to him. He felt tense in John’s arms, stiff and worried, but Oliver hated to admit fear. Oliver rushed headlong into everything. Oliver had been kidnapped and strapped down and had been the bravest human being to ever live, thought John, and when they were standing on top of the hill he hugged him closely with sudden emotion and mumbled at him, “You’re going to have so much fun, Ollie. I promise, right? Would I ever lie to you?” 

This seemed to fortify Oliver, and when John settled him on the sledge between two bigger boys he even gave John a tentative smile. John pressed Oliver’s hat down harder, smiled back at him, and said, “Have fun.” 

And then the sledge pushed off. 

***

The story went thus: 

How Oliver arrived at the bottom of the hill having lost his hat during the ride, his cheeks red with cold and wind, laughing hysterically over the genius of sledging. And Sherlock was bewildered by this but nonetheless no match for the addictive qualities of Oliver laughing with full-blown joy. He and John took turns carting him up the hill again and again and again, until the early winter twilight came, and Oliver— _Oliver_ , who from infancy onward had never napped—was so exhausted that he was asleep on John’s shoulder by the time they got back to Baker Street. John put him to bed and secretly promised him snow every year for the rest of his life, no matter what John would have to do to achieve such a thing. 

They told Oliver the story, over and over, as he grew older. His older self always said disdainfully, “But it was just _sledging_ ; you’re exaggerating what a big deal it was.” 

And John would think of that winter of healing, of how vivid other images of Oliver had been in his brain, and how much he’d been able to overwrite them, replace them, with Oliver laughing with genuine, untraumatized abandon over the simple joy of snow. 

And he would just smile.


End file.
